by Sean Platt
All she had to do was swallow, and the shaking, sweating, and pain would fade.
She started to swallow, then stopped.
She opened the stall door, leaned over the toilet and spit it out.
She flushed, then fell to the floor sobbing.
* * * *
CHAPTER 28 - JEFFREY BROWN
Jeffrey Brown sat in the tiny dark bedroom of his crappy little apartment, clicking on his shitty laptop to view the LiveLyfe account of his bitch ex-wife, Sandra.
The newest post included a photo she’d taken of her and Lynn Macklin at last year’s Christmas party. Shit, he could post a few photos to show what total sluts they were. Lynn was the whore who got them involved in that swinger’s club in the first place.
She’d posted several paragraphs under the photo detailing her grief over her “best friend’s” death, then even more paragraphs about how fucked up the world was, with lunatics walking around with such dangerous weapons.
Jeff laughed at that particular choice of word. Lunatic. The same word she’d used to describe him once after a particularly nasty fight that she had started. The one where he’d hurled a wrought iron bar chair through the sliding glass door of a gorgeous home they once shared. The McMansion he’d worked his ass off for, where she now lived with one of his former co-workers. Eugene, the backstabber who stole his promotion.
Jeff re-read the post, delighting in Sandra’s ability to turn any situation, even the death of her so-called best friend into a spot on her soapbox. But everything always came back to bite her.
“Best friend, eh? You bitched about her all the fucking time when we were married.” He laughed at the screen. “You said she was white trash who lucked into that diner. You are such a fucking hypocritical cunt!”
Jeff stood to pace, wishing he’d recorded some of the things Sandra had said about her friends, about her enemies, about everyone. Hell, she’d once called Eugene a “shifty fucking Jew.” He wondered how that would go over with him and her new friends.
Judging from her recent pro-Israeli LiveLyfe political posts, you’d think she was the next Golda Meir or something. She had this way of taking shit from other people and making it her own. Culture, stories, money. She didn’t care.
Jeff stared at the 51 hearts and 120 thumbs up her “tribute” post had received.
Jesus, she has these fuckers so fooled. They have no clue what she really is. None!
All these people saying how sorry they were for her loss as if she’d suffered a tragedy or something!
“Fuuuuuuck you!”
He’d wanted to rattle her. To take down everyone in her inner circle. Everyone who had betrayed him. Destroy all of their lives before finishing her.
But she wasn’t frail or getting scared. The bitch was using the tragedies, first Chip Halverson, and now Lynn Macklin, to shine the spotlight on herself.
“You are a fucking vampire!”
The immigrant asshole in the apartment next to his banged on the wall. “Shut the fuck up!”
Jeff grabbed the AR-15, shoved it up against the wall, and wrapped his finger around the trigger.
He hated the fucker next door. Some old asshole who did nothing but sit home all day bitching whenever Jeff cranked his music, or watched TV too loud, or yelled at his wife’s LiveLyfe page.
Jeff wasn’t sure if the dude was Greek or from one of those Muslimistan countries, but he definitely looked like he should be on a fucking watch list. He had olive-colored skin, big bushy eyebrows, and beady dark eyes that glared at Jeff every time they passed in the hallway. Jeff had never done shit to the guy, had even gone out of his way to invite the fucker over for drinks when he moved into the complex last year.
Jeff continued to hold the gun against the wall, finger twitching on the trigger. It would be so easy to let her rip. Turn the guy into Big League Chew. Then maybe peek through the holes and spit on his corpse.
He laughed.
The old man had no idea what Jeff was capable of.
Nobody did.
They all thought he was some fucking loser cuck who got fucked over by his ex and former co-worker. He could feel their stares, hear their whispers when he ran into them around town. He could see their judging glances the few times he’d shopped in the store.
He could hear them laughing behind his back.
And every time he ran into someone from his past who even looked at him wrong, he added them to The List.
They’d pay.
They’d all pay.
He leaned his rifle against the wall, then sat back at his desk, scrolled down the screen, and saw that Eugene had left a comment on Sandra’s post.
We all know how much she meant to you. I’m so sorry.
“She didn’t mean shit to her! For fuck’s sake! And that’s some bland shit to write to someone you live with!”
BANG! BANG!
“Shut up!”
“Fuck you!” Jeff yelled back, getting up and punching the wall repeatedly. “Shut the fuck up!”
“No, you shut up!” The man pounded the wall even harder.
Jeff glanced at the rifle, then at his nightstand and the Beretta M9.
He grabbed it and stormed out of his room.
He went to his door, unlocked and opened it, then marched toward his neighbor’s apartment.
They were on the third floor, on the short end of an L-shaped building, with only one other apartment, unrented, on the other side of Orestes.
Gun in hand, he marched toward the old man’s door, then stopped at the sound of giggling coming down the steps behind him.
He slipped the gun into his front waistband, covered it with his long black tee, and kept walking past the old man’s door, and to the rail running the long side of the complex. He leaned against it as if he’d just come out to gaze at the weather.
More giggling.
He turned to see a set of twins, a brother and sister, around eight-years-old, chasing each other with squirt guns.
They raced past him, then back toward the stairs where their mother was descending the steps.
She was an attractive blonde, wearing tight pink sweat pants like usual. They hugged her ass ever so perfectly. She was also wearing a loose-fitting Nirvana tee, her braless nipples pointing through the worn cotton. She was carrying a laundry basket on her hip, probably because the fourth-floor machine was out of order.
“Hi,” she said, giving him an awkward wave as she passed with her kids in tow.
“Hi,” he said, just as awkwardly.
When he’d first moved in, he’d ended up on the elevator with her one evening while coming home from work. She was alone, arms loaded with groceries. He tried to make conversation. But he was in his Pizza Shack uniform. Sweaty and greasy, reeking of dough and despair.
The conversation was short, and he could practically feel her disdain.
Another time when she and her kids had passed him, Jeff was certain that she’d rolled her eyes.
Rolled her fucking eyes at me! What the fuck did I do to her?
He wondered how she’d treat him if he’d had his old job as a front-end manager at Mac’s Food Mart. It wasn’t glamorous, like being a doctor, athlete, or lawyer, but it had paid well. He had no shortage of women — hot women, too — wanting to sleep with him when he had that job, including several college-aged cashiers. But he’d always said no because he loved his wife.
Fucking idiot.
Now he couldn’t even get a single mother of two, a woman who might be a Six on a scale of One to Ten, to give him the time of day.
If I had that management job, she’d show a little fucking respect. Women always respect money and security.
And he would’ve landed that management job if Eugene hadn’t stabbed him in the back and completely fucked a relationship with one of their biggest vendors, which somehow became Jeff’s fault.
Work being what it was in his town, he’d had to take a job as a delivery driver to make ends meet until he could find anoth
er decent paying gig. But fuck if he knew when that would be.
Meanwhile, Jeff lost it all — his job, his wife and son, and finally his house. All of it gone months, swept away by an avalanche of shit luck.
As the hot mother passed, her son turned around and aimed his squirt gun at Jeff. “POW!”
He didn’t fire the water gun, but he obviously wanted to.
Jeff laughed as he considered pulling out his gun.
Pow yourself, you little shit!
He wouldn’t shoot the kid. He might be a lunatic, but he wasn’t a monster. And he hadn’t meant to kill the kids in the diner, either. But he would have no problem killing their stuck-up cunt of a mom.
As he watched the mother’s ass walk away, he heard the door open behind him.
Fucking Old Man.
He turned.
The old man, in his thick whatever accent, said, “What?”
Jeff thought about shooting him right there between his bushy fucking eyebrows. Send his brains all over the back of his door.
Fuck you, that’s what!
He ignored him instead, went back into his apartment and slammed the door.
He had to control his emotions. At least until Sandra was dead.
He returned to the computer and saw someone had posted on Eugene’s wall.
“Can’t wait for the bachelor party this weekend at The Purple Pole.”
Surely thinking himself witty, Eugene responded with, Shh, don’t tell my wife.
“Fuck you, Eugene,” Jeff said under his breath, thinking of a way to make Eugene’s bachelor party especially memorable.
* * * *
CHAPTER 29 - JASPER PARISH
Jasper woke to the sound of a man crying.
He opened his eyes and saw someone standing in the corner of his room. He was tall, broad built, with a dark crew cut, for some reason reminding Jasper of a pre-Depression era boxer. He was wearing shorts and a white tank top, his chest heaving as he sobbed, staring at the ground.
Jasper reached for the pistol on his nightstand, grabbed it then trained it on the man, all in a second. “Down on the floor!”
“How could you?” the man asked, still staring down, ignoring Jasper.
Is this fucker on drugs?
Jasper climbed out of bed, gun still trained on the man, hand searching for his cell to phone the sheriff’s office. His heart raced as his fingers fumbled for a phone that wasn’t there. He didn’t dare turn to look for it.
The man was holding something behind him.
Then he brought it forward — a machete.
“Woah, put it down!” Jasper commanded.
The man didn’t respond. He looked up and stared to Jasper’s left.
Jasper turned toward a light bleeding from a wide open bathroom that didn’t exist on the left side of the room.
Where the hell am I?
Nothing was making sense, his head swimming in fear and confusion.
He wasn’t in his room.
Or in his house.
Nor was he alone with the man.
Appearing from nowhere, a dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties clutched a crying dark haired boy who couldn’t have been older than three.
“Put the machete down!” Jasper demanded, stepping between the woman and child then child and man.
“Please, Tony, don’t!”
“I’m sorry,” he cried, walking toward them, machete raised.
Jasper lifted the pistol and fired.
The bullet went through the man as if he were a ghost. And then the man passed right through Jasper.
What the hell?
He turned to see the woman scream, defensively raising a hand while clutching the child tight.
There was nothing she could do as Tony lowered the blade, lopping off her arm before plunging the machete straight into the back of the child’s head.
Jasper woke screaming, soaked in a cold sweat, gun in his hand, back in his own room.
His bedroom door flew open.
Jasper raised the gun and readied himself for Tony, as if the man had crossed over from the dream, or vision, into Jasper’s reality.
But it was Jordyn.
“Don’t shoot!” she yelled, dropping to the ground.
Head spinning, Jasper dropped the gun. “It’s okay,” he said, getting out of bed.
Jordyn, in her pajamas, stared at him, terrified. “What happened?”
He stared past her and through the hole he’d fired through his bedroom door. Sleepwalking was one thing, but sleepshooting? He could have killed her.
“Oh my God, I’m … I don’t know.”
She stared at him, terror parting the sea to concern. “Was someone in here?”
“Um … no. It was just a bad dream.”
She shook her head, her concern now wilting to annoyance. “When was the last time you took your medicine?”
He shook his head. “Please, don’t start.”
Carissa appeared. “She’s right, you know.”
“Not you, too,” he said.
Jordyn looked at Carissa.
“Do you see her?” Jasper asked, hopeful.
“Come on, Dad. You know that she’s not there.”
Jasper sighed, long and deep.
Carissa said, “You’re the only one, Jass.”
Jordyn went to the door. “You could’ve killed me!”
“I’m not going to kill you!” he argued, despite that he was thinking the same thing.
She glared at him, then dove for the gun. She held it in her hand.
“What the hell are you doing? Put that down!” Jasper wasn’t worried about her hurting herself or him. He’d taken her to the gun range ever since she was ten — any child of his would know how to use a gun and how to respect it.
“No. You don’t get this back until you’re better.”
“Jordyn, give me the gun.”
“No,” she said, backing toward the door.
“I’ll take my meds.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Carissa shook her head. “Me either.”
Jasper sighed again. “Come on. I don’t need the meds.”
“You almost shot me!”
“No, I did not almost shoot you. It’s …” he looked at the clock on his nightstand. “It’s one in the morning. You were in bed.”
“What if you shot through the wall toward my room? Or what if I was walking to the bathroom? Huh?”
Silence.
“What were you even shooting at?”
“Nothing.”
“I wanna know.”
“I think I had a vision.”
“A vision?” she asked, surprised. “What did you see?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I wanna know.”
“A guy … he killed his wife and kid, I think.”
“Oh my God. Really?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was a vivid nightmare. But this isn’t about me not taking my—”
“Please, Dad. You’re not healthy, and something’s wrong. We both know it. When was the last time you took your meds?”
“I don’t know.”
“Last week?”
He shook his head, “I don’t know.”
“Last month?”
“I don’t know.”
She started towards his bathroom.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking,” she said.
She flipped on the light, set the gun on the sink, and opened the mirrored drug cabinet.
From his angle, Jasper couldn’t see what she was looking at, but he knew — rows of full pill containers.
“What the hell, Dad?” she asked, picking up one bottle after another, reading the labels.
“You haven’t taken any of these in like six months!” Her eyes began to water. “Why aren’t you taking your medicine?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” she said, stepping out of the bathroom, rattling a bottle, gun
still on the counter behind her.
“I … I miss her. I don’t see her when I’m on them.”
“But you’re not really seeing her. She isn’t here. It’s all in your head. Please tell me that you’re not so far gone that you don’t know that?”
“I know,” Jasper said, though he wasn’t being entirely honest. Lines blurred. There were times when he believed that maybe he was somehow seeing her ghost. He was psychic, after all. Why wouldn’t he have other senses that most people didn’t?
“What happened? I thought we were going to start fresh. I thought things were going to be better — for both of us.”
It was hard to see your child cry and not surrender to tears of your own, but Jasper did his best to trap the sorrow inside. Succumb, and he might just collapse to the ground. No child should have to witness their father’s break down, especially when there was nothing they can do to help.
“I missed her. I wanted to see her again.”
“I miss her too, but you know who I miss more? You. You’re not the same off the pills. You’re mean. You get drunk. And even when you’re nice, you’re just not all there.”
Jasper bit his lip to keep it from trembling.
“You need to take your pills.”
Carissa gave him a disapproving look and said, “She’s right.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not just that I won’t see her anymore. The pills dull the visions.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was on pills for three years leading up to your mother’s cancer diagnosis. If I hadn’t been taking them, I would’ve had a vision. We would’ve known. We could have saved her.”
Carissa stared at him, wiping at her tears. “You think it’s your fault?”
Jordyn, as if somehow channeling her mother, said, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was! We could’ve saved her.” He turned away, squeezing his eyes shut tight to keep the tears inside.
“You said before that you couldn’t control the visions. Remember that time I asked you why you didn’t use your visions to stop Hamster from running away?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling as he remembered the big teddy bear looking dog that they’d saved from the shelter when Jordyn was four or five. Named Hamster because Jordyn’s hamster, also named Hamster, had died a month before.
